


Boldness Amongst the Wreck.

by Triddlegrl



Series: Pretty Woman [3]
Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:24:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7305049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triddlegrl/pseuds/Triddlegrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Aaron Olson's life is a glass jar, then I regret to inform you that someone threw a stone and shattered it. The culprit has gone by many names over the years but his face is always the same. He's beautiful and blond as any angel, and the farthest thing from. He calls himself Brian Holt. These are the shards of said life, broken and stained, and this is how colored pieces of glass make a complete picture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boldness Amongst the Wreck.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece of an original story based off the lives of Alex and Aaron from Pretty Woman. You won't necessarily need to have read that story to understand this one but I would recommend it for clarity.This is a piece of an original story based off two OC's in my other story Pretty Woman. You won't necessarily need to have read that story to understand this one but I would recommend it for clarity. In creating that story I developed the characters and they ended up being as real to me as Kurt and Blaine were. Often I would set aside PW to wright some vivid scene from their life that wouldn't leave me alone. Boldness Amongst The Wreck strings those together. It doesn't follow their lives chronologically (so don't get confused) but as Aaron insists, it makes a complete picture. The final title for this collection of vignettes is inspired by and taken from Mumford and Son's song Little Lion Man. *Edit 2016: I've only ever published one of these vignettes. But if you'd ever like more let me know.

**London England 2016**

  
Imagine for a moment that you were in a garden and you came upon an exotic flower. This flower was one of the most beautiful things you’d ever seen. It promised to brighten whatever room you placed it in, warm the heart of whatever lovers hands you graced it, if only you would reach out and pluck.  
  
And so you did, but when you did it opened its mouth and tried to swallow you. It’s a man eating trap, not a plant at all but a predator, and now it has a piece of you and it won’t let go. It slowly draws you in and its teeth grind at your flesh, acid stripping away the rest. No matter how much you scream and struggle to get free you can see the line your feet make in the dirt as you’re dragged further and further into the mouth of the beast. That line is your time slowly and steadily ticking down.  
  
Aaron’s caught in the mouth of a man eating something- a destructive addiction that will eventually cost him everything- and it’s not that he’s stupid, not that he wouldn’t give anything to be able to walk away from it all but this isn’t the simple thing the high and mighty like to pretend it is.  
  
He wants to stop, but stopping would mean getting the world to stop shrinking in around him. Stopping would mean purging his body of years of abuse, stopping would mean placing mind over matter when his matter has happily taken the hits since he was as young as eleven- when his matter shakes and yowls like a cat in heat without them.  
  
He tries because an angel came down from the heavens and demanded for repentance. He tries for Alex, his beautiful masterpiece, the only real treasure he has ever had in his life.  
  
But dreams are breakable and angels, they fall. Aaron knows that true hell is watching Alex crack beneath the weight of his sins. So he keeps his sins to himself and when he slips he doles out his own special brand of penance. Self hatred is as strong a motivator as it is a weakness. It pushes him to be better, to make things right, but it makes the fall when he inevitably fails that much steeper.  
  
He’s slipping again. His whole body is on edge, his core cramping with hunger pains: hunger for the hit. He knows this need, and hates the needing of it. He’s irritable, he’s down right hateful of himself and the need he can’t be rid of, and it spills over onto every good part of his life-petulance gnawing at his golden harvest.  
  
He and Alex have done nothing but argue all week.  
  
The nightmares are back so Aaron avoids sleep. His hands shake, his fingers twitch and his veins flex. It’s an insatiable thirst that rides him hard, that makes Aaron fear himself and each moment alone. Alex worries. Alex suspects. Alex is angry and hurt; that just makes the thirst worse. Aaron is burning inside, burning to flood his veins with the most familiar solace-safety in the high places.  
  
He escapes, he tries to outdistance himself and and keep his soft targets out of his own line of fire. He carries his camera, his shield, and he wanders the streets searching for the perfect image. He focuses on this task with obsession; he needs such singular focus as that to ignore the hunger. He needs the perfect moment to capture, something that will prove innocence and beauty in the world. Something like Alex.  
  
He thinks that maybe he hates Alex a little. Why did he have to be…  
  
And then he accepts what he already knows. It’s a recurring revelation, what he comes to know as he stands in the cold, clutching his camera to his chest and watching the snow collect on the backs of his hands. The memory Aaron wants to make for himself isn’t out here on the streets, isn’t tucked here in the picturesque village covered in light snowfall. It’s at home waiting by a fire, probably in the same place he’d left it after their fight.  
  
When Aaron walks into the front room Alex doesn’t hear him. He doesn’t look up from the book he’s not reading until he hears the shutter and click of his camera. Alex is the moment.  
  
Here is someone innocent, someone beautiful, someone that Aaron will never tire of wanting to capture and hold for himself. For reasons he can’t explain Alex wants him back, but then again life often is unspeakably cruel.  
  
Aaron lowers the camera and the two men stare at each other for a moment in silence.  
  
“You’re back,” Alex finally speaks and Aaron lets out a puff of air, a strand of his blond hair floating up on the cloud of breath. He bites his lip and shrugs. He always means to make it end, to stop their pain, but even here he can’t manage to do the right thing. Yes he’s back, he always comes back.  
  
“I can’t figure out what’s gotten into you lately Aaron.” Alex says with a sigh, shifting the book in his lap as Aaron draws closer. As he comes to stand beside his lovers chair Aaron sees that the book in his lap is actually a very familiar leather album.  
  
“I wonder if maybe you don’t want this anymore. Maybe I didn’t give you enough time to know what you wanted for yourself. You were so young…maybe I took advantage of things…maybe I should have-”  
  
“Stop Alex, stop,” Aaron interrupts him, kneeling at his side until they are nearly eye to eye. He takes the worn picture album from Alex’s hands and traces the design etched on the cover because he knows these lines by memory and their worn paths are easier to face than the future is.  
  
“You’re seven years my senior, hardly a step from rotting in the grave now are you?” he asks, opening the album and turning to the page he needs to see.  
  
Aaron knows all of these pages and the moments locked in them by heart. He passes the earliest photos, his first treasures from childhood, all of them taken with one use point and clicks stolen from connivance stores. He has never had much to his name and he has never been worth very much to anyone but his pictures he has always guarded like they were gold in his pockets.  
  
They are more than mementos; they are a living record of his life. Long after he has died they will still be there evidence that he has lived.  
  
He passes those early shots, and comes to the ones in the middle, the ones he’d taken with his first real camera- the second real gift ever given to him. Alex had been the first and he’d bought Aaron the camera as a birthday gift that year.  
  
Aaron pauses at the first photo he ever took with it and smiles. It’s a blurry picture of Alex raising a forkful of cake to his mouth, wide eyed as the flash captures his surprise and the flush of delight in his cheeks.  
  
“I’m not a child Alex,” Aaron reminds them both. “I knew what I wanted then and I know what I want now.” He shuts the album with a snap, anger and helplessness welling up inside. What he wants is the problem. What he wants isn’t fair to either of them if he can’t get over himself, if he can’t stop poisoning them at every turn. But that’s the funny thing about wanting, it doesn’t care about what’s fair or what’s good.  
  
It’s cold in the room despite the fire, or maybe Aaron is just cold. He’s shivering as Alex calls his name, soft and warm like a small flame beckoning him towards warmth and light.  
  
“Alex?” He answers. Somewhere inside he still believes if he just answers the call the angel will tear the roof off of hell and set him free.  
  
“You can talk to me. You know that right?” Alex asks, lowering himself onto the floor beside Aaron and Aaron feels the twisting in his gut get pointed and sharp. He drops his head against his lovers shoulder and lets his long hair fall down like a curtain to shield eyes that have started to sting. He breathes deeply, taking in both their scents and loving the way they mingle, how pure and rich they smell.  
  
“I know.”  
  
Aaron does know.  
  
But Alex is wrong; there are just some things that he can never share with him, not if he wants to keep the one thing he wants most. The bitter thing about it all though is that Aaron will lose that anyway because he’s too weak. He’s rotten inside and he’s not sure how he got that way; maybe he was born that way.  
  
Maybe mother had been right all of those times and he was just black inside like his father; good for nothing but ruin. Sometimes she would look at him with the hatred she stored up just for him and other times he shared that hatred with a man he’d never really known. They seemed to be one and the same.  
  
_“You’re a bastard Brian Olson, a right little bastard.”_  
  
If Alex knew what he was really like, everything he has done despite every good thing that has come his way…  
  
Aaron’s thoughts melt away as Alex shifts closer to him. His hands push aside Aaron’s long hair his lips pressing firmly against the place where his neck meets the curve of his shoulder.  
  
“I love you.” Alex breathes against his skin and Aaron shivers. He draws Alex’s face up close to his, staring into his beautiful green eyes and diving into their depths as if salvation lies somewhere in them. He has never loved anything like he loves this man, and he’s sorry for that. Every damn day.  
  
“I love you Alexander Porter. I truly cannot count the ways in which I love you more,” Aaron says somewhat sadly before he captures Alex’s lips and they forget all about sadness and the angry words behind them.  
  
The little voice that whispers _‘More than me’_ is only ever heard inside his own head.


End file.
